Page 64 of I'll Be Waiting

I look up to see pipes snaking everywhere. Including pipes from… the water heater.

Really? Are you that spooked, Nic? Freaking out at drips and scrapes in a furnace room? It’s a wonder the whole furnace isn’t groaning.

Well, no, it’s not a wonder because the active furnace is new, as is the water heater. The monstrous old one probably hasn’t been used in decades. It’s just still here because the house was built around it, and it’s not going anywhere.

I nearly turn and walk away before I remember what I’d been doing. Not investigating strange noises but looking at the other side of the furnace.

Right, looking for your secret room.

Hey, I’m going to be thorough, because I know how this goes. If that door upstairs doesn’t slam shut, locking me in, then once I leave, it’ll relock before I can fetch the others. I am checking all possibilities while I’m down here.

I take another step, and when my foot slides, it’s only the barest of slips, but my brain goes wild, proving I’m not nearly as calm as I’m acting. Both hands fly out to catch myself, one slapping the side of the new furnace.

As I catch my breath, I chastise myself for overreacting. I hadn’t nearly fallen. My toe had just slipped a little on something.

Slipped on what?

I go very still and slowly glance down. I catch sight of plaid fabric under my foot and I dance back with a yelp, remembering what Mrs. Kilmer said about Brodie wearing a plaid jacket. In my mind, I’m stepping on a dead body. In reality, I’ve stepped on the slippery edge of a plaid sleeping bag.

Anemptysleeping bag.

I catch my breath again as I brace against the furnace. The sleeping bag is tucked into a gap between the old furnace and the new one. If I hadn’t walked over here, I’d never have seen it, which seems to be the point. A hiding spot with a sleeping bag and a rucksack. Empty pop cans and chip bags spill from a grocery-store polyester bag clearly being used for trash.

It looks like a teenager’s hidey-hole. The place he goes to escape parents who are just too annoying to handle for a moment longer. Brodie might not be a teen, but if he’s troubled or developmentally delayed, this could still be where he comes to escape an overprotective mother.

It’s clear he’s not here, though. The sleeping bag is empty, and that wall I came to check has no secret doors or windows. I bend to touch the bag. Cold. I’m pulling away when something pricksmy hand and, again, I overreact, stumbling back and falling flat on my ass.

I lift my hand to see a tiny scrape, not even deep enough to draw blood. I crouch by the sleeping bag and pull back a fold where my hand touched down. A needle rolls out, the plunger depressed.

I pull up the sleeping bag. There’s another needle underneath, and when I check the bag used for garbage, there are more in it.

The explanation for this could be that Brodie is a diabetic. I know more about the condition than most, because nearly half of CF patients eventually contract it when our disease affects our pancreas to the point where it no longer produces insulin.

But that needle isn’t for insulin taken before Brodie consumes the snacks. I don’t just find syringes. I find a rubber hose, a spoon, and a lighter.

Seeing that, I sink onto my haunches, overcome by a wave of sympathy for Mrs. Kilmer. We’d been trying so hard to figure out what “issue” Brodie might have. Why would she think her adult son might be in our basement?

Because he was shooting up. The owner said no one else had keys, but Brodie obviously found or made a set, using his position as a part-time groundskeeper. While the house would often be empty at this time of year, he still wasn’t taking the chance of shooting up in the living room. He had his hiding spot down here, with snacks and a lantern, in a windowless space where even the glow of his lantern wouldn’t be seen. A sheltered and warm spot near the furnace where he could do what he obviously couldn’t do at home.

His mother knew he was an addict and, apparently, knew where he liked to shoot up, and she was handling it in her own way. Better to keep him at home and work on his addiction than give ultimatums that sent him into the streets, beyond her reach.

I understand her desperation now. Brodie came here to shoot up and maybe to sleep it off, and if he hadn’t snuck back the next morning, thatcould mean her worst nightmare come true. Her son had overdosed. Overdosed in a place where she couldn’t get to him, and she was obviously too afraid—of censure, of judgment, of losing her job—to tell the truth.

Had I known what she feared, I would have broken down the door. I’m horrified and heartbroken thinking of how panicked she must be, at how cruel we’d unknowingly been, brushing her off like that.

If Brodie had been here, he’s gone now. Either he’s been slipping in and out or he’d been on a bender for the past two days and snuck out this morning, forgetting to close and lock the basement door behind him.

I suspect he’s already home, with an excuse at the ready for when his mother wakes. Still, I’ll head to her house after breakfast. I won’t shame Mrs. Kilmer by admitting I know the truth. I’ll say I’m concerned and want to know whether he’s come home, and she’ll say he has, and that will be the end of it.

One mystery solved. Maybe I should be relieved, but I’m not. What happened to Anton was a tragedy made all the worse by the mundaneness of it. My life was ripped apart that night. On that same night, five people died in car accidents across Canada. Five other families experienced life-exploding pain that day and then five more the next day and five more the day after that. The same goes for this family tragedy. It is all too commonplace—a child caught in the grip of addiction, a parent desperately praying the next needle isn’t their last.

These things happen. It’s a breathtakingly cold fact, and it leaves me sitting beside that sleeping bag, crying for Anton and crying for Mrs. Kilmer and crying for a young man I don’t know, until I hear Jin and Cirillo talking as they make coffee upstairs. Then I wipe away the tears and head up to tell them what I found.

EIGHTEEN

An hour later, everyone has seen the nest behind the furnace. Everyone has come to the same undeniable conclusion. We are dealing with the family tragedy of addiction.

Still, we’re cautious. Jin grabs a spade he spotted in the garden and brings it down, apparently as a potential weapon. Then we all search the basement, just to be absolutely certain there’s no chance Brodie crawled behind a stack of chairs and died of an overdose. He didn’t. He was here, and now he’s gone.

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